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It is not possible to be a scientist unless you believe that all the knowledge of the universe and all the power it bestows is of intrinisic value to everyone.
Star Trek Voyager (via supernovasyntax)
(via coffeeandbrainz)
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“Our national resources are developed by an earnest culture of the arts of peace.”
McGill University, Mount Royal, Montreal, circa 1870
The St Lawrence River is far behind the camera and the east end of Mount Royal is visible in the centre. The Arts Building of McGill University (with the round cupola) was completed in 1862. The Montreal Presbyterian College is at the left edge of the photo. The little building with the dome between the two is probably the McGill Astronomical Observatory … which later supplied ‘standard time’ daily by telegraph to the Canadian Pacific Railway’s head office at Windsor Station.
Above the observatory is Ravenscrag, the mansion of Sir Hugh Allan. The tower afforded him an excellent vantage point from which to survey the comings and goings in Montreal Harbour.
from: Montreal, Then and Now; Bryan Demchinsky; 1985; The Gazette.
(via fuckyeahmontrealrs)
“We now know enough to know that we will never know everything. This is why we need art: it teaches us how to live with mystery. Only the artist can explore the ineffable without offering us an answer, for sometimes there is no answer. John Keats called this romantic impulse ‘negative capability.’ He said that certain poets, like Shakespeare, had ‘the ability to remain in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.’ Keats realized that just because something can’t be solved, or reduced into the laws of physics, doesn’t mean it isn’t real. When we venture beyond the edge of our knowledge, all we have is art.
But before we can get a fourth culture, our two existing cultures must modify their habits. First of all, the humanities must sincerely engage with the sciences. Henry James defined the writer as someone on whom nothing is lost; artists must heed his call and not ignore science’s inspiring descriptions of reality. Every humanist should read Nature.
At the same time, the sciences must recognize that their truths are not the only truths. No knowledge has a monopoly on knowledge. That simple idea will be the starting premise of any fourth culture. As Karl Popper, an eminent defender of science, wrote, ‘It is imperative that we give up the idea of ultimate sources of knowledge, and admit that all knowledge is human; that it is mixed with our errors, our prejudices, our dreams, and our hopes; that all we can do is to grope for truth even though it is beyond our reach. There is no authority beyond the reach of criticism.”
Jonah Lehrer, American journalist who writes on the topics of psychology, neuroscience, and the relationship between science and the humanities, Proust Was a Neuroscientist, Mariner Books, 2008. (via amiquote)
